Saturday, 21 September 2013

Google Says Bye Bye to Bevelled Look

The new logo on Google UK 'looks flatter' according to BBC News's Leo Kelion (2013); I have to admit I was unsure if this was an actual change or not, to start with and took a double take, but it appears to be on a slow roll-out, the changes to the interface are subtle but very focussed on removing distractions and streamlining both the page layout (if it could be any more streamlined) and the user experience. Clearly, there are larger changes afoot, but if they are as subtle as these most users perhaps will not notice so much.

The logo itself does feel cleaner now that the bevel has been removed, but could this be argued too simplistic? Eddie Kessler of Google (2013) stated in their official blog that they have also updated the colour palette and the letter forms, but these are very subtle differences indeed; the relationship between the first 'G' and 'o' does seem still to be quite awkward, but as ever this logo is as much about the negative space as it is the form of the characters and their relationships - something always draws me to the space inside the 'G'.

Google is the landing point for many people and the changes seem on the face of it, an improvement and in keeping with their developments of late, appear to be further integrating the G+ side of things and their portfolio of web applications. They have incorporated the conventional icon for app menu / launchers into the design and the page does feel much cleaner, the menu works on absolute positioning from the right until the browser window is resized below 1000px in width on a desktop and the changes don't appear to have reached the mobile site yet.

So the new menu is much simpler, with only +You, Gmail and Images visible, with everything else hidden in the app menu; of course when you are logged in the Share dialogue and profile avatar are revealed and this is probably my favourite part of the change; having the share integrated directly into all Google pages is certainly designed to engage a wider audience with + through the now streamlined process. I am sure I will use this frequently in the future.